Allen Ginsberg

White Shroud: Poems 1980-1985 [Inscribed to John Clellon Holmes]

New York, NY: Harper & Row, 1986. First Edition.

89 pp. Fine in a Fine dust jacket. Bright red cloth boards are clean and sharp, with gilt lettering to the spine. Dust jacket is exceptionally clean and preserved in a protective Mylar sleeve. Internally clean and unmarked, without tears or other notable defects.

An exceptional association copy, warmly inscribed by Allen Ginsberg on the front free endpaper to his friend and fellow Beat writer John Clellon Holmes:

“For John Clellon Holmes — Futher [sic] amusements among the living phantoms. Best Wishes in Samsara and Nirvana — ‘Both are good’ said the late Chögyam Trungpa — Allen Ginsberg”

A significant presentation between two central figures in the emergence of the Beat Generation. Holmes was an intimate of Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady, and their circle and became one of the movement's earliest chroniclers. His 1952 novel Go, which fictionalized members of the emerging Beat circle, is widely regarded as the first published Beat novel; that same year, his influential New York Times Magazine essay “This Is the Beat Generation” helped introduce the movement and its name to a national audience.

The unusually personal inscription reflects Ginsberg and Holmes's shared intellectual concerns, invoking the Buddhist concepts of samsara and nirvana and quoting the late Chögyam Trungpa, the Tibetan Buddhist teacher with whom Ginsberg had studied.

Provenance: From the library of John Clellon Holmes, subsequently given by Holmes's sister, Lila Holmes, to psychologist and writer Jeff Smalldon while Smalldon was working on an ultimately unpublished biography of Holmes. Accompanying the book is a postcard from Holmes to Smalldon discussing Smalldon's piece “Lonesome for God,” further documenting the Holmes–Smalldon association.

An important Ginsberg association copy with direct provenance connecting two foundational figures of the Beat Generation. The accompanying Holmes postcard is included and should remain with the book.

Case 1.

. Fine / Fine. Item #282
ISBN: 0060157143

Price: $7,500.00